Terrebonne County Louisiana Archives News.....Fifty Years Ago No. 4 September 13, 1890
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The Thibodaux Sentinel September 13, 1890
The council, after organization, entered into an agreement with Mrs. Bridget 
Thibodaux by which the town became the owner of a lot of ground forty feed in 
width, parallel and North of Market street, extending from Green to Market, upon 
which a market house was subsequently erected and which was used for that 
purpose until 1862 when it caught fire from sparks from a steamboat in the bayou 
and was destroyed. In the second story of this building was a room, known as 
council hall, in which the mayor and trustees held their sessions. In after 
years, an addition was made to the East end for the protection of a fire engine, 
and a well dug within, which well remains in use, near the present market house. 
In the same contract the town became the purchaser of a square of ground on Back 
street, known and still used as a potters’ field. For these two lots of ground, 
all the property belonging to Mrs. Thibodaux was to be exempted from the payment 
of all corporation taxes for the space of ten years.

The market house had been erected before the contract had been legally made.

It was erected by Mr. C. E. Morton for thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.

The council contracted with Mr. Reuben Gresham to build a fence around the 
market house; stalls, benches, etc., were placed in the building, and an 
Ordinance regulating the sales therein was enacted, when the market house was 
opened for the use of the public, and remained the only one until its 
destruction.

A fence was built around Potters’ Field at a cost of fifty dollars.

A drainage ditch was dug on the west side of Jackson Street.

The want of side walks and banquettes was seriously felt in the town, standing 
upon a soil of stiff, heavy alluvial deposits, and which adhered to the shoes 
and feet with a remarkable tenacity, rendering promenades in rainy weather 
anything but pleasant and agreeable. 

In order to obviate this annoyance the council ordered the purchase of flat 
boats, with the gunwales and lumber of which sidewalks could be constructed. The 
taxes assessed for the revenues of the town were fixed at one third of one 
percent on land and improvements and one fourth of one percent on slave 
property. 

A ferry across bayou Lafourche was located at the end of Maronge street. Leander 
Bourgeois was the purchaser of the lease for one year, in September 1840, for 
the sum of six hundred and forty dollars.

The courthouse, stood on the same ground that the present one occupies. It was a 
frame building, and, when the new building was about to be erected, it was 
removed to the corner of Green and Market streets, and is now occupied by James 
A. Frost as a saloon.

In the north east corner of the courthouse square was a small building used for 
the office of the clerk of the district court, and in the north west corner of 
the square was a similar building, occupied by the recorder of the parish. These 
two offices were demolished in 1861 when the new courthouse was completed.

The jail was situated upon the same site that the present one occupies. It was a 
frame building and demolished about 1858 for the construction of the new prison.

The jailor’s house was the same one that now stands on the northwest corner of 
the square.

About the year 1840, the wants of the town demanded that a street should be made 
along the banks of the bayou Lafourche, for commercial purposes, and for the 
reception and forwarding of freight by water.

A surveyor was engaged by Ordinance, “To run Levee street to ascertain, as 
nearly as may be, what persons, if any, have encroached upon the street, by 
erecting improvements.”

Subsequently Mr. John C. Beatty was by act “authorized to call upon the 
proprietors on Levee street who have encroached on the same to procure of them a 
recognition of the rights of the town, with their consent that they will remove 
whenever notified so to do by the lawful authorities of the town, all 
encroaching improvements, and in the event of a refusal on the part of any of 
them to give the recognition, he is hereby empowered to commence legal 
proceedings for the purpose of enforcing the rights of the corporation.”

Nothing practical appears to have come from these proceedings.



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